Thursday, March 22, 2012

Johnny Brook South

Starting at the top of this site, there is a conglomerate of structures which appear agrarian, but for what purpose, I couldn't say:Above, you are looking at a series of row cairns which could make up a fence row (only one line, however...there is no enclosure) and something like a stone foundation at the bottom, right where that bent over tree is in the photo.

But, going into that stone foundation (I'm calling it a "foundation" because one line along the foundation is very straight, but the rest of the structure is garbled in with the landscape), I found this:
Walking further to the south and east, there are rock piles that take on a much more random appearance, yet still look something like a grid. Notice that semi-upright stone in the near distance. If you click on the photo, you might see another rock pile in the far distance, offset from the semi-upright stone:
This picture is taken from the semi-upright stone, with the next rock pile in the distance:Now, is this just me, or does it seem like, in the two previous photos, that you can somehow line up those rock piles with something along the horizon? I am still trying to figure that out.

Here is the beauty that was in the distance from the previous two photos. Notice the little rock on top?
Here's a close up. I took it at this angle purposely, to show the stone just to the left, with the Manitou shape:
Then, a bit further to the south, another rock pile, this one near a spring, again lining up with the rock pile with the quartz on top (that pile is just behind the apple tree in the background).
Another pile further south, this one is disheveled:
There is agrarian evidence nearby. Stone walls at the top of the ridge, something like a dam or a mill down in the valley, and a stone foundation near the old road (that one shows up on the old 1926 USGS map). So, a lot of this site has me perplexed, especially with that nice rock pile with the quartz right in the center of all those rock piles.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Johnny Brook revisited

Back to Johnny Brook (click the link and scroll up to see the prior post). The DEP opened up more hiking land in this area. There is a lot of land to explore here. Three thousand seven hundred ninety one acres, to be exact...give or take because some of it is posted off limits, but the map doesn't show that part.

I visited two sites on this hike. One is to the north and the other is to the south. Both are small sites. This post is on the site to the north, with an honorable mention to a rock pile in between both sites.

The site to the north is in the Johnny Brook hiking area, but, to be accurate, it overlooks Barbour Brook not far from where Barbour Brook meets Dry Brook.

This is one of the first rock piles we walked up to approaching the site.
The base looked bird-like to me, from this angle:
Another angle of the same rock pile, this time looking slightly testudinate:A small rock pile in between some larger ones:One of the larger ones, from an angle where 4 upright stones are in front of the boulder:This one, no doubt, is a turtle:
This is the honorable mention rock pile. It is near the trail, at the base of an overgrown field. The shape and fact that it's constructed between two large boulders is intriguing. If its purpose was for clearing a field, there appears to be a hollow, or caved in section (seen better in the first photo below), which would have made a good place to pack clearing stones instead of constructing loosely:

I'll post about the site to the south later.